


Finders Keepers

by glasgowgirl92



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, meaning the smut's at the end if you wanna jump straight in ;), slow-burn I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 15:46:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6085521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasgowgirl92/pseuds/glasgowgirl92
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This war's not about fighting anymore. It's about who gets what."</p><p>Ron and Carwood find one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finders Keepers

**Author's Note:**

> I made promises to a couple of readers a very, very long time ago for a Speirton fic as thanks for their wonderful comments on my other works. Here, at long last, it is.
> 
> I still find Ron the most difficult character to 'get right', so I focused pretty closely on canon events to try and capture him as best I could. I'm writing a lot of original material at the moment, hence why this has been so belated, but I'd love to make some additions to my modern AU (possibly a Christmas in July fic since I've well and truly missed Christmas) or if anyone has any requests, feel free to ask!

Steam rose across Lip’s back as he trudged uphill towards the treeline. Echoed shouts and the occasional gunshot grew fainter with every step, masked by the crunch and slither of his boots in the snow. Hot breaths frosted in his hair, sweat freezing across his brow. At the foot of the shattered forest he turned. 

They had been looking down on Foy for days piled on days, steeling themselves against the eventual assault. Fear had built the town in their minds until it had become a rearing, impenetrable fortress protected by miles of open killing fields. How different it looked now: a tiny, dilapidated village; a square of clodded grass barely large enough for a decent game of football. Buildings reduced to piles of embers glowed against the snow-filled sky. 

The wind changed with an icy snap against Lip’s collar, for once a welcome chill against hands stinging with the heat of battle. Cold and fear are so easily forgotten. He laughed now to remember the hours spent in futile dread, watching Dike’s silhouette as it disappeared into the trees.  


‘Thank God,’ he whispered to himself. 

*

Noville and Rachamps fell in quick succession. The promise of relief in Mourmelon- never to be realised- for now warmed the men more than their first night under a roof in weeks. Lip leaned against a pew and stowed the company roster in his pocket, eighty-two names lighter. So many, and yet it seemed miraculous that any of them had survived at all. Perhaps they wouldn’t have. 

Speirs caught him watching from the corner of his eye.  
‘What is it?’ he coughed gruffly, folding a completed After Action Report.  
‘Nothing,’ there was mirth in Lip’s voice as he replied.  
He knew the men were afraid of Speirs. Lip had been more afraid of Lieutenant Dike than blood or bullets or any officer he’d ever served under- for different reasons. He couldn’t bring himself to fear the man who had spared him what he’d dreaded most all those long, barren nights in the ground of Bastogne. The very idea caused a smile to crinkle the knot of scar tissue lining his cheek. 

Speirs stood and turned away from him. His first glance struck Lip like a body blow: rough, abrupt. The second lingered.  
‘You wanna ask me, don’t you?’  
Lip bit his tongue against the answer this invited: _you want me to ask._

‘You ever notice with stories like that, everyone says they heard it from someone who was there? Then when you ask that person, they say they heard it from someone who was there.’  
Speirs checked his webbing, slinging on his rifle as he spoke, deft and spare in his movements. His voice was clipped. Lip had learned from experience that those who appear so controlled generally control themselves with good reason.  
‘I bet if you went back two thousand years, you’d hear a couple of centurions standing around yakkin’ about how Tertius lopped off the heads of some Carthaginian prisoners.’ 

‘Well,’ Lip remarked to his boots, ‘maybe they kept talking about it because they never heard Tertius deny it.’  
Something in the solace of that warm night, the way the candlelight softened Speirs’ face, loosened his tongue. He felt drunk; effervescent with relief. Mere days later the giddiness gave way to constant unassailable shivers, then the cough that grated his lungs to shreds. For now, his chest felt nothing but a brief, warm flutter as Speirs’ mouth quirked.  
‘Maybe that’s because Tertius knew there was some value to the men thinking he was the meanest, toughest son of a bitch in the whole Roman Legion.’

‘Sir,’ Lip called with newfound boldness to the Lieutenant’s turned back. Speirs faced him slowly, eyebrows raised in wordless question.  
‘These men aren’t really concerned about the stories.’  
Now, that wasn’t strictly true. But it gave Lip the pleasure of voicing out loud the rallying cry of his own heart: _happy to have a good leader again._

That night, when the flagstones’ chill radiating into his back woke him shaking, Lip stilled himself and remembered. The way Speirs had watched him evenly as he described the “one man Easy could always count on”. He reddened to imagine the blank look on his face, blush spreading down his neck as he recalled the shock of Speirs’ smile. _Hell, it was you, First Sergeant._  
He’d deserved that, he thought, flinching from the memory of the words he’d said; the liberties he’d taken. A Lieutenant. Perhaps that was why he’d gotten away with nothing more than a rather sharp slice of Speirs’ sense of humour. 

In the darkness, with the first worrying thickness straining his breath, Lip remembered the choir’s faint song as Speirs’ footsteps echoed away. The way he must have looked, swaying dumbfounded and suddenly alone. The heat on his face, from the candles and the relief of being inside for the first time in a month.  


From more than that.

*

‘Nice digs, huh, Lip?’  
Luz seemed to be everywhere at once, flitting around the room a dozen times in the space it took Lip to draw a single agonising breath. Easing himself into a seat, Lip surveyed the new Company CP through bleary eyes.  
‘Yeah, boy.’

The house must have been impressive in its glory days, whenever they had been: a grandeur which would have been described as ‘faded’ even before the business end of the Allied assault had torn right through it. Patterned silk wallpaper hung down in peeling scabs, antique books lying splayed and soiled on muddy floorboards. The chaise beneath him was damp with melted snow, blown in through smashed windows. The ancient military-issue blanket Luz spread over his knees stank of old sweat. 

‘Can you get me a coffee?’ he snagged Private Vest on his way past. His arm felt lead-heavy as he waved Lieutenant Jones towards a seat. ‘Would you like a coffee, Sir?’  
‘No, thank you.’  
Jones and Webster shone like new pennies in their fresh-pressed uniforms. Lip’s skin crawled, stiff with dirt. He dragged himself up until he was half at attention.  


‘He’s been runnin’ on coffee for three fuckin’ days,’ Luz griped distractedly. ‘Show us your hands, Lip.’  
Lip hid his hands in his lap, stilling them with great force of will to a slight tremor.  
‘I’m not hungry.’  
‘Nausea’s a pretty common symptom of Pneumonia,’ Webster offered unhelpfully. Lieutenant Jones stood silent and unignorable: a splinter under the skin of their conversation.  
‘Don’t you encourage him,’ Luz rounded on Web, a box of rat-packs under one arm. ‘He needs to eat!’

Jones snapped to attention at the approaching echo of boots in the hall.  
‘Sir,’ Lip straightened himself against the chaise as Speirs entered the room in his typical manner, making everyone feel as if they were passengers reeling away from a platform’s edge as a freight train thundered by. ‘This is Lieutenant Jones.’  


Speirs didn’t even spare the boy a glance.  
‘Listen, for Christ’s sake, will you go back in the back and sack out?’ he barked, throwing one arm almost straight into Webster’s face. ‘There’s some beds back there with fresh sheets.’ His voice was slurred around the cigarette between his lips, hair slickened by days of sweat and snow.  
‘I will, Sir. Just trying to make myself useful, Sir.’ Lip couldn’t suppress a fleeting smirk at the huge gold antique clock Speirs had slung under one arm.

As Speirs dumped his latest treasure-trove on top of the ruined grand piano, Captain Winters appeared in the doorway behind with Nixon in tow as always. Lip put one foot on the floor to stand before catching Speirs glaring at him from across the room. Relenting, he leaned backwards and blinked heavily at Winters, trying in vain to keep hold of the conversation. A tin mug of coffee appeared from somewhere, thrust into his hands. The heat ached against his skin. He could feel the pressure of Speirs’ eyes on him.

Swathes of time seemed to pass drowsily by without his having much knowledge of what events had filled them. He brought the mug to his lips, forcing down a sip of tasteless brackish water which was at least warm and didn’t sit like lead in his stomach. When he looked up, Nixon and Winters had gone and Speirs was leaning over the back of the chaise, unnervingly close.  


‘We’re short on officers. You think a non-com could lead this?’  
A patrol, then. The fate of the men brought him instantly out of his mental fug.  
‘I can think of a few possibilities,’ he replied.  
Speirs shifted, looking at him expectantly. ‘Martin? Malarkey? Grant?’  
Sighing, Lip thought of their faces in pale lines, trudging like sleepwalkers through the ruined streets of Hagenau.  
‘Honestly, Sir, most of the NCOs could use a rest.’

‘Captain?’ Jones’ voice startled him. ‘Request permission to go on the patrol.’  
‘There’s your answer,’ Lip mumbled without thinking. Speirs held his eyes for a beat before turning. Lip found himself watching the edge of his jaw as he spoke; the exposed skin of his neck, gleaming where snow had melted on his collar.  
‘No. You don’t have the experience. Report to Second Platoon.’  
Jones swayed back on his heels: a sapling caught by a stiff breeze. ‘Yes, Sir.’

Sensing the impatience in Speirs’ voice, Lip quickly steered him towards Webster before he could bolt away. He stood shifting his weight from foot to foot as Web spun some shaggy dog story about Malarkey and Second Platoon.  
‘Fine, Second,’ Speirs snapped, cutting him off. ‘Take, uh…’  
‘Lieutenant Jones,’ Lip prompted wearily.  
‘The Lieutenant. OP 2.’

Jones and Webster sprung into action, both looking decidedly grateful to be dismissed, even if they hadn’t exactly got what they wanted. Speirs had that effect on people, Lip thought with a wry smile. He allowed himself to sink a little further against the cushion at his back, swallowing down a cough that scratched in his throat.  
‘Oh, and you-’ Speirs turned in the doorway, pointing at him. ‘Get some rest.’  
Lip almost spilled his coffee in an effort to pull himself back upright.  
‘I’m fine, Sir, really…’  


Speirs stepped back over to the chaise, resting one hand on the backboard. His fingers brushed against Lip’s shoulder: a touch that went unnoticed beneath four layers of winter clothing.  
‘Get some rest. That’s an order.’  
Lip swallowed drily, opening his mouth to protest, only to find himself staring at Speirs’ retreating back, alone once again in an empty room. A breeze whistled through the ruined floor above. 

*

A half-hearted darkness fell over Hagenau, shadows of ruined buildings fleeing from the light of the full moon. Lip shifted clumsily, wincing as the mattress-springs gave a rusty shriek. Even the rustling of his combat jacket, still slung across his shoulders beneath a layer of blankets, felt unbearably loud and close. The house seemed every once in a while to stir, as if waking: the flutter of curtains, the groan of a loose floorboard. Lip watched a mouse creep from under the upturned dresser and sniff hesitantly at the empty sleeping bag laid out on the floor. The patrol would be leaving soon. 

Drawing a breath that bubbled fitfully in his chest, Lip closed his eyes, searching for the dream that had left him. A half-waking jumble of images swam before him as though he were a boy again, staring at the dizzying lights of the carousel in Camden Park. His mother’s face, black-and-white like a photograph. Autumn leaves spotting the porch-step with daubs of red. The snow, patterned with boot-prints and blood. A gold clock slung hastily under one arm. He felt a weight on his hand; felt Malarkey’s shoulder sag under it as he recited the names: _Grant, Jackson, Wynn, Liebgott, Powers, Webster_. Where were they now, he wondered, remembering the cold darkness of the water at night. 

‘Lipton.’  
He lurched back into consciousness, all dreams dissipating except for the warmth against his hand, solid and real.  
‘Sir,’ he replied instinctively, voice catching in his clogged throat. It took him a moment to recognise the face above him in the dark.  
‘Lay down for Christ’s sake, will you?’ Speirs grumbled, moving away.  
Lip abandoned his futile attempt to shuffle upright, letting his head fall back against the pillow. His skin tingled with sudden cold where Speirs’ touch had been.  
‘The patrol,’ he croaked, glancing towards the window.  
‘Underway.’

Lip felt the mattress dip near his feet, bedsprings groaning beneath the addition of Speirs’ weight. Moonlight caught the stern set of his jaw as he sat, leaning against the bedframe.  
‘They’ll be fine.’  
Speirs gave a sharp, humourless huff of laughter in reply.  
‘That’s the problem.’  
A beat of silence passed.  


‘Sir?’  
‘They’ve begun to hope that they just might make it out of this damn thing alive.’ ‘He paused, taking out his cigarette-lighter. ‘They’re afraid.’  
Lip flushed.  
‘They’re not cowards,’ he replied before he could think better of it. He bit his lip, heart suddenly clenched. Speirs just eyed him evenly from the other side of the bed.  
‘Not every man who’s afraid is a coward. Of course they’re afraid: of enemy fire, of capture, of death.’ He turned the lighter over and over in his hands. ‘Just as long as they’re still more afraid of me.’

Lip watched shadows pooling deep at the corners of the room as Speirs’ face glowed pale in the darkness. He thought back to that day on the hilltop, looking over the blackened remains of Foy, thanking God for this man. Remembered him setting out at a loping sprint through bristles of enemy infantry, feeling for one surreal moment as if he were watching from across a football field, at Speirs running fast and spare and easy towards the goal line. He remembered the wild burst of laughter torn from his chest, the soaring of his heart almost too sharp to bear. He came back. Lip had heard the broil of battle calm in his ears, feeling its very momentum shift. Though the fight raged on, in that single moment it had been won. In that moment, they would have followed him into the mouth of hell.  
‘They would follow you anyway,’ he said softly. _I would follow you._

Speirs shook his head. “It is better to be feared than loved.”  
“If you cannot be both.”  
Lip decided his aborted career at Marshall University was worth the sharp glance of surprise this merited. Speirs watched him for a moment, then smiled faintly.  
‘They already have someone to love.’

Perhaps it was shortness of breath that caused his head to spin. In the shadows, Speirs’ eyes were impossible to read.  
‘I should get back,’ he said. Lip swallowed painfully.  
‘Sir.’  
Clearing his throat, Speirs hoisted himself to his feet and strolled across the room without another word. Lip wondered, fleetingly, if he was still dreaming.

‘Oh, and Lieutenant?’  
_Lieutenant._ He knew just where to stick the knife in, Lip thought ruefully as he twisted round to face the door.  
‘Sir?’  
‘Before I forget, a certain George Luz asked me to give you this-’ Speirs tossed something onto the bed. A Hershey bar. ‘He says you need to eat.’  
Lip couldn’t suppress a huff of amusement, thinning into a breathless wheeze. As he turned again the doorway was empty. 

Throughout the night, whenever Lip’s own coughing startled him from his exhausted, dreamless semi-consciousness, the empty dark echoed with fits of gunfire.

*

‘Congratulations, Lieutenant.’  
‘Thank you, Sir.’  
Lip thanked his lucky stars that his lungs were beginning to clear as Harry slapped him a little over-heartily on the back. He felt his ears burning when Winters, Nixon and even Lieutenant Jones crowded in to shake his hand. Catching Luz’s Cheshire grin in the doorway, he looked down at his boots.  
‘Come on,’ a voice sounded close to his ear. He didn’t notice that it was Speirs ushering him towards the front hall until they were alone on the stairwell. 

‘So, how does it feel?’  
Speirs closed the door behind them and turned, flashing him a sharp smile. Lip found himself still beaming like an idiot and covered his mouth under the disguise of a cough.  
‘Just fine, Sir.’  
‘Ron,’ Speirs took a step forward. ‘You can call me Ron, now.’ He ran his hand up the banister, leaning almost idly into Lip’s space. Lip heard the dull thud of his own heels against the bottom step.  
‘Alright. Ron.’ The name felt strange on his tongue: a foreign language. 

Speirs watched him in that long, uncanny way that made the hairs stand up at the back of his neck. He recalled Christensen and Perconte joking that they could feel Speirs coming, as if the very air went still in his presence. How silent it was in this part of the house.  
‘And I’ll call you… Lieutenant,’ Speirs said, his voice soft and close. Lip felt something tilt dizzily inside him, as if the ground beneath his feet had begun to fall away.  
‘Carwood,’ he replied, no more than a whisper. ‘You can call me Carwood.’

The door behind them burst open to reveal Private Vest, laden down by a precariously-balanced tray of silverware.  
‘Oh, uh, sorry Sirs-’ Vest seemed too preoccupied with a toppling candlestick to notice the way Lip started backwards, almost tripping over the staircase. Speirs turned leisurely, as if they’d been discussing a particularly boring field report.  
‘That my stuff?’  
‘Yes Sir, I’m headed back to the APO now, Sir. Same address as last time?’  
‘Right.’

Lip regained enough composure to smile hastily as Vest bustled through the corridor. Letting out a shaky sigh, he looked up to see Speirs grinning at him.  
‘You really shouldn’t,’ he said, trying to look stern even as a mad urge to laugh gripped him. Speirs shrugged.  
‘Everyone else is doing it.’  
‘Everyone else is doing it because you are.’  
Speirs’ eyes always rested on him a beat too long. Lip willed himself not to look away.  


‘Finders, keepers,’ Speirs replied.

*

‘Pair of queens bets.’  
‘Alright, two bucks.’  
Lip watched from the corner of his eye as Nixon drained the bottle of Vat 69 he’d been nursing for the last hour.  
‘Nix?’ he ventured.  
‘Nah, I’m out.’ Nixon’s chair scraped bitterly across the floor as he stood, slamming the dead man down. Speirs and Harry exchanged a silent, knowing glance.  
‘Alright,’ Lip carried on as blithely as he could. ‘I’ll call your two and… I’ll raise you another two.’  
All three ignored the muffled sounds of frantic searching from Nixon’s room. 

‘I can’t believe we’re not gonna drop into Berlin,’ Harry sighed, blowing a wreath of grey smoke towards the chandelier. Speirs smiled ruefully around his own cigarette.  
‘No shit.’  
‘Ike’s gonna let the Russkies have it.’  
‘Ha, Russkies…’  
Lip shuffled the cards in silence, listening to the beat of rain on the window at his back. Flames curled and guttered in the white marble grate, catching the side of Speirs’ face with flecks of amber light. He was clean-shaven, for the first time since they’d come to know each other, Lip thought suddenly. He didn’t look younger the way most men did. 

‘I’ll tell you something-’ Speirs looked up and directly at him and Lip blinked, flushing, caught staring like a replacement fed on stories of slaughtered POWs. ‘This war’s not about fighting anymore. It’s about who gets what.’  
The room seemed to grow dim and still around them. Lip felt the same lost, listing way he had that day in Hagenau. He remembered the dull thud of his boots against the staircase. Speirs’ gaze never left him, steady as a distant horizon. 

‘Go ahead and deal me outta the next hand.’  
Nixon’s voice brought Lip back with a jolt: the blunt edge he’d learned to listen out for in Bastogne, when it was time to pack someone off behind the line for a hot meal. Fatigue wasn’t Nixon’s problem and everyone knew it.  
‘What about your money?’ Speirs called after him, to no avail. Harry rolled his eyes.  
‘Are we waiting on him again?’  
‘Yeah,’ Lip replied, glancing at Speirs just in time to catch the tail-end of his stare. 

‘Actually,’ said Harry, pausing to take a last long pull of his beer, ‘I’d better follow suit. Got a letter to write Kitty.’  
‘You sap,’ Speirs muttered with a smirk. Harry tossed down his cards and laid a crumpled handful of dollar bills beside Nixon’s.  
‘Yeah, yeah. Well, you two enjoy the spoils of war.’  
Lip felt a sudden chill at the back of his neck as a door slammed shut downstairs.  
‘Night,’ he managed belatedly as Harry sloped off down the hall. 

‘So,’ Ron said, stubbing his cigarette on the table-top, ‘how should we split it?’  
He pushed his chair back and stood, leaning nonchalantly against the mantelpiece. Lip watched the dark shape of his hand as he warmed it against the blaze.  
‘You tell me,’ he replied, getting to his feet. ‘You’re the expert on looting.’  
Ron laughed softly, his face reflected in the overmantel mirror, his eyes meeting Lip’s through the glass. Lip ran the tips of his fingers along the table as he moved, as if steadying himself. He could feel his own pulse against the polished wood. When he reached the fire Speirs turned to him.

‘Finders, keepers.’  
His hand on Lip’s face burned like a flame. 

*

The twin echo of their footsteps broke hard and urgent against the silence. Lip felt his heartbeat aching under his skin as he walked, certain their footfalls would give them away, bodies echoing with lust. Speirs didn’t look at him as they traversed the corridor towards his room. Lip followed, watching the pale band of flesh at the back of his collar. His lips felt swollen; his face raw, as if scalded.  
‘In here,’ Speirs opened a door to the left, one hand falling on Lip’s shoulder as he ushered him inside. Lip heard, as if from far away, a key turning swiftly in the lock. His head was swimming. 

‘Carwood.’  
The warmth of Speirs’ touch on his back: a cautious pressure smoothing down the length of his spine. Lip’s eyes fell closed as he felt a breath against his neck. He turned.  
‘Sir-’  
Whatever he’d planned to say, it was swallowed by the impossible heat of Speirs’ mouth, driving him back until he collided with the sideboard. His hand slammed against the wall, scrabbling for purchase.  


‘Ron,’ Speirs murmured against his lips. ‘You called me Ron before.’  
Lip heard a broken noise rise in his throat as Speirs’ teeth grazed against his neck, deftly kicking his legs apart with one tap of his boot. A sudden glazed flash of panic gripped him as Speirs slid a hand along his thigh.  
‘I’ve never- I don’t know how to-’ he manoeuvred one arm awkwardly between them, pushing Speirs back. His neck was wet. He shivered. ‘I’ve never done this before.’

Speirs didn’t let go, but his grip loosened.  
‘Carwood,’ he said again, his voice low and dark. ‘You’re married.’  
A new type of fear seized him then.  
‘I didn’t mean-’  


‘You’re telling me you’ve never done this before-’ Speirs pulled Lip’s shirt from under his belt, tracing his fingertips along Lip’s ribcage. ‘Or this-’ Lip closed his eyes as Speirs bit softly at the shell of his ear. ‘Or this?’ They both groaned as Speirs pulled Lip’s thigh up around his hip, pressing their bodies together.  
‘You know what I meant,’ Lip breathed, feeling his cock twitch against Speirs’ hardness.  
‘There are other ways.’

Lip felt the throb of muscles knotted tight: the pain of absence, as if he’d been sprinting for miles, as Speirs drew back minutely.  
‘Don’t,’ he said, catching Speirs’ wrist as his arms dropped. Speirs watched him, pupils blown to blackness, lips parted and profanely red.  
‘You’re sure?’  
Lip thought of Hagenau; of Speirs standing over him in the night. Of their hands, together in the darkness. He thought of the convent in Rachamps: his smile flickering in the candlelight. Hell, it was you, First Sergeant. Heart clenching tight, he clasped the back of Speirs’ neck and pulled him into a kiss, hands fisted roughly in his shirt, rolling his hips until Speirs’ mouth opened helplessly under the pressure of his tongue.  
‘Show me,’ he gasped. 

The chill sent Lip trembling as Speirs unbuttoned him. Shucking his shirt impatiently, he reached for Speirs’ uniform, only to find himself pushed back. Speirs smoothed one hand down the plane of Lip’s chest, across his abdomen, lightening his touch when Lip hissed at the ticklish spot below his ribs. His hands were slow now, but purposeful, easing off yet never relenting an inch. Lip’s knuckles blanched as he gripped the sideboard.  
‘I’ve thought about this,’ Speirs whispered against his skin, mouthing along the line of his collarbone. ‘Wanted it, since- Carwood…’  
Lip bit back a groan as Speirs cupped him through his ODs, arching forward as his fingers slipped under the waistband.  


‘Jesus…’  
The heavy, coiling sensation in his groin seemed to spring apart, relief like he had never known coursing through him with every firm slide of Speirs’ hand on his cock. He reached for the back of Speirs’ head, now nestled in the crook of his shoulder. Speirs growled as Lip’s fingers clenched in his hair, tugging him upwards. Lip kissed him hard and reckless, all teeth and tongue, mouth slackening into a whimper as Speirs turned his wrist just right. 

‘Bed,’ Speirs managed thickly, pulling his hand away and flashing a breathless grin as Lip fell against him. Together they stripped Speirs of his shirt and kicked off their boots, Lip pressing himself instinctively into the heat of exposed skin. Speirs crowded him backwards until the bedframe caught him at the back of the knee. They went tumbling onto the mattress, legs tangled, a gasp of laughter forced from Lip’s chest as Speirs fell on top of him.  


‘Carwood,’ Speirs breathed again, looking intently down as he tugged Lip’s ODs from around his waist. Lip closed his eyes and trembled at the burning marks of Speirs’ tongue; the bruises sucked into his flesh. Speirs’ fingers graced the tough line of scar tissue on his inner thigh.  
‘Ron,’ he said, as soft as breath. Speirs’ mouth closed around him.  
‘Ron, Ron, Ron.’

*

‘When did you know?’

Lip opened his eyes. Ron’s face was a dark warmth on the pillow beside him, obscured by shadow. Flits of moonlight played against the curtains.  
‘Foy,’ he replied, the weight of Ron’s arm anchored around his shoulders. ‘You came back for us.’  
Their breaths mingled for a while in silence.  
‘Foy.’ Fingers brushed against the nape of his neck. ‘I knew then, too.’  
Lip blinked, seeing nothing. He remembered cringing in the snow behind a haystack, looking into Dike’s blank eyes. He felt the sting of a ricochet against his cheek; the sour ache of fear; the pounding of blood.  
‘You did?’  
Ron hummed softly. ‘The sniper. You drew his fire.’

He’d forgotten. Shifty had been the hero of that particular hour, taking the impossible shot. Lip had felt distinctly like a rabbit fleeing from headlights.  
‘All I did was run,’ he said, shifting uncomfortably. Ron’s hand closed gently around his wrist.  
‘That’s all I did, too.’


End file.
